At least one blogger out there has pointed out that at the end of Mena’s explanation of the new licenses for MT she provides us with a “wink and a nod” that suggests there’s nothing stopping us from violating the license agreement.
We’re big on honor at Six Apart. We haven’t built in any nagware for license violations or phone home mechanisms. We trust our users’ good judgment and intentions. We intend to use our good judgment in being flexible about enforcing these limits.
The implication does seem pretty clear: Even though we’ve defined very clear licensing limits and pricing, we’re not going to be policing you guys so we’re hoping you’ll be honest. But we reserve the right to enforce our licenses if we feel you’ve gone too far in violating them.
I don’t think that’s a wise approach to take nor do I think it’ll work all that well. Haven’t they been paying attention to the lessons being learned by the music industry?
I’d much rather pay for my copy of MT than violate the free version’s license as I like the software and I think the folks at Six Apart deserve some compensation. I could purchase the lowest level personal license, but I’d still have to violate it to maintain my setup the way I currently have it. Even then with the cost being $69.95 I have to ask myself why I don’t just spend $45 on pMachine Pro where I won’t have to violate the license in order to have all the blogs and authors I want. When I consider that it would probably cost me upwards of $150 to be in the clear license-wise I then have to consider the fact that I may as well buy Expression Engine for that much money, get more features for my bucks, and still not have any upper limits on number of blogs or authors.
The irony is that unlike so many other folks are suggesting, I’ve been prepared to pay for MovableType ever since they announced MT Pro. If MT3D had the features that were promised for MT Pro along with truly generous limits on numbers of blogs and authors at a price that was comparable to the competition I’d be the first to whip out his bank card and get in line.
What we got was a version that holds much promise, but not much in the way of new stuff you can actually play with at a price and with restrictions that aren’t even close to what the competition offers (and I’m not even TALKING about the free blog packages) or the option to knowingly violate the license agreements while Six Apart looks the other way. WTF? How the hell is that a reasonable solution?
I find it interesting to note that you must have a TypeKey account to download the free version of MT3D, which I have done in order to take a look at. It does appear that the script itself isn’t crippled in any way and there’s nothing stopping me from just installing the upgrade and continuing on my merry way.
Other than my conscious, that is.
